Astronaut
Piers Sellers passed away Dec. 23, 2016 in Houston of pancreatic
cancer. Sellers flew on space shuttle missions STS-112, 121, and
132, helping complete construction of the International Space Station,
and served for several years as acting director of the Earth Sciences
Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
His research on biosphere-climate interactions has been cited thousands
of times, and he spearheaded numerous major earth science missions
at NASA which are still bearing fruit decades later. He was a long
time supporter of the Mars Society of Houston, and MAST President
BeBe Kelly-Serrato remembers him as a kind and humble man who often
shared lunches with NASA staff and didn't let his astronaut status
go to his head. "He was just cool and loved people."

Thursday,
September 25, 2014 - The Mars Society of Houston (MSOH) has
been a chapter of The Mars Society national organization for many
years, and first of all, we want to thank you for supporting us
all these years. That being said, we are ready to announce that
this organization is soon to change in name and attitude. After
numerous conversations with space professionals here in Houston
and with the MSOH officers, the executive committee has met and
voted to formally separate from The Mars Society. We are reorganizing
to become an individual entity and adopting our own exclusive mission
statement. This has been a stressful decision and not taken lightly,
but one that we feel is necessary to pursue separate goals. All
who are currently registered members of The Mars Society in the
Houston area are welcome to join this new group.

The
MSOH website is currently www.marshouston.org
and will likely remain so for the time being, as it is completely
independent of the national Mars Society website and has been for
years. The Facebook
page will be renamed soon.

The
officers on this site are comprised of current Mars Society members
and new members of what will be the new organization. They are as
follows:

Additional
executive officers and steering committee members will be announced
later.

We
are looking to fill in our roster with executive level officers.
These officers must be in the Houston, TX area for the present.
This is a formal announcement to the Mars Society members who have
paid a membership fee to the national society or are looking to
join the national Mars Society.

All
current MSOH members are free to make their own choice to take one
of the following paths:

1.
They can create their own Mars Society chapter and work with the
national society to meet that goal.

2.
They can join one of the other organizations such as MOON, NSS,
AIAA, or ASA, which all have varying meeting times; that information
is readily available to everyone via the Internet and members
can all decide what they would like to do.

3.
The third option is to meet with us after during our first community
meeting to ask questions of the leadership on the proposal we
will prepare for the members who attend. We will post the event
date and location here on this Facebook page. Additionally, there
will be ground-floor leadership executive roles; MAST requires
functioning at an optimum level. MAST will interview or select
and target key individuals for these roles from the membership
and from the aerospace and corporate community. We desire this
organization to be an elite professional association which provides
pleasure and practical science and which leads people, leads change,
drives results, shows business acumen, and builds collaboration
for a true "spacefaring" mindset. We also encourage
everyone from young people to seniors to participate in the leadership,
to provide mentoring and flagship projects, and to involve the
community. We intend to structure the bylaws to maintain professionalism
and to avoid stagnation and burnout in the leadership. Further
details will be discussed at the first meeting.

We
will of course support the national Mars Society as a separate entity
of kindred spirits, but we feel that the Houston space community
is ready to take a different approach and scrutiny of Mars as well
as other spacefaring events, and we want to build an organization
that best reflects the goals, aspirations, talent, and experience
of the one and only Space City, USA. We hope you will join us on
this new voyage of exploration.

Mars
Astronautics Science Technologies

C/O
President
Houston, TX

This
page is maintained by ChiliPepperWeb.net
for Mars Astronautics Science Technologies. For more information contact
MAST President BeBe Kelly-Serrato.
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